


Mabel Pines vs. The Laws Of Narrative Causality

by scribefindegil



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Mabel Pines is the most important girl in the universe, i've been trying to write this since the finale, not really a discworld crossover but thematically a discworld crossover., since the gf universe doesn't usually involve actively fighting the story you're in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 02:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10710630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: She’d chosen reality. She should have known what that meant. She’d chosen the end of childhood, the end of innocence and happiness and hope. It was time to grow up. Time to accept what a realistic life looked like. Time to accept that you couldn’t save the world without losing something just as important. Time to—No.





	Mabel Pines vs. The Laws Of Narrative Causality

Once upon a time there was a man who loved his family so much that he lost them, and then he lost himself.

Once upon a time there was a man who was so frightened to admit how much his family mattered to him that he refused to accept it until it was too late, and he spent the rest of his life regretting it.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved mysteries until he grew into a man who dreaded them.

Once upon a time there was a girl, and then she turned into a woman and was never happy again.

_This is the story you’re in,_ said a voice in her head. _You chose this. You chose to leave your paradise and grow up. This is what growing up is. It’s losing people. It’s having your heart broken. It’s watching the things you love fall apart. This is what’s supposed to happen. It’s supposed to be poetic and tragic. This is how the world works._

They stood there in the clearing: the old man writing his own Greek tragedy in his head clinging to the man with nothing in his head at all. The boy whose head was full of conspiracy theories and bad ends.

And Mabel Pines.

She could feel the shape of the story building like a wave, trying to wash her and her family away with it. She could feel the tragedy trying to sink its fingers into them, trying to tell her that the old men would only ever be a cautionary tale, that she and her brother would only ever be a tragedy waiting to happen. It was the shape of every story they read at school, stories that were supposed to be important and serious but only ever felt sad.

(“Why don’t we read books where good things happen?” she’d demanded, and her teacher had smiled and said, “That’s just not realistic, dear.”)

She’d chosen reality. She should have known what that meant. She’d chosen the end of childhood, the end of innocence and happiness and hope. It was time to grow up. Time to accept what a realistic life looked like. Time to accept that you couldn’t save the world without losing something just as important. Time to—

_No._

Here is a fact about Mabel Pines: she is selfish. She is the sort of selfish that makes her stand up against the things that try to break her and say: No. This is _my_ family. This is _my_ world. I will not let you take it from me.

The others all bent their heads, ready to be washed away by the unforgiving tide of the story, by the inevitability of it all, but Mabel Pines braced herself against the current and stood tall and let it break over her.

Mabel Pines ignored her uncle's protests, ignored the hopeless look in his eyes, and picked up the book she'd made and started to read. The man who wasn't her uncle anymore seemed frightened when she climbed into his lap, but she knew that she fit there, knew that the whole family fit together like a puzzle, like one of those sculptures where every piece balances the others so that if you remove one the whole thing falls apart. They'd been apart for so long, but they didn't have to stay that way. They just needed to find the right way to slot together, and they were so close.

They were so close to a happy ending.

She knew the world was more selfish than she was. She knew she couldn’t fix everything. But she would fix this.

Mabel read. She read from a pink glittery scrapbook and she fought the story that was trying to catch her up in it. She battled back with her words and her stickers and her crooked photos and her love, weaving together hundreds of lace-weight threads into a net so strong that when the story got caught up in it instead of pulling her away it bucked and struggled and finally changed its course.

_This is my reality,_ she told the universe. _This is my story and my uncle, and you cannot have him._

And the universe reshaped itself around her.


End file.
